Building a multi-peripheral controller with a GPAK4

In today´s article the author describes a project developed by one of the prize winners. What prize winners? What prize at all? Ok, let´s rewind a little here. The author talks wonders about Silego´s GPAK chip and so those guys were very excited about the interest generated that they decided to give the author 25 development kits of the GPAK4 (the prize). What could our starring character do with 25 dev kits on his hands??? He launched a contest and the 25 winners, those whose projects were most interesting, would win one of the dev kits.

Well, now that we all know what we are talking about…Wait, what is a GPAK4? Fair enough. A GPAK4 as the author defines it is “a super-small, mixed-signal FPGA that you can literally design and program in just a few minutes, and that cost only a few cents each”.

After this quick introduction, I would say that the article moves on to explaining some of the details of the logic design implemented on the GPAK4 FPGA for its multi-peripheral controller. The main advantages of implementing this tiny device are offloading the host MCU, saving GPIOs and simplifying PCB layouts. You will be able to see some of the simulation results and if you are interested you can download the whole design file here.

Stay tuned for the remaining 24 projects and for another giveaway…

By Max Maxfield